Mr and Mrs America
- 3 years ago
- 22
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Mr. And Mrs. America free porn video
This is a different one for me. No cheating. No elaborate plots. Just a story of appreciating what you have. I’ve been told that happiness is not having everything you want, but wanting what you have. And there is more than one way to betray someone, so here’s a story about that.
Edited by my good friend NonetheWiser, who, as usually, takes my drivel and makes it readable. The man truly has the ability to polish a turd and make it shine!
It does start with a funeral. Sorry Ohio — I hope it makes up for that.
*****
Mr. & Mrs. America
We watched the casket go into the hole, sinking slowly out of sight to where, presumably, the conveyer belt took it to the ovens. Somber music played, Bach Suite No. 6 I think, I wasn’t really paying that much attention. Strangely, I suddenly wondered why Mike hadn’t taken care of the music himself. He was an organized guy — he had to be, details were everything in his life — so why hadn’t he sorted this out? Or, maybe he had? Maybe we were listening to his selections. If that were true, I didn’t know him as well as I thought.
I glanced at Jo, who was holding my hand tight. She glanced back at me, sensing the movement of my head. She gave me a ‘bit lip’ smile. One of those ones where you want to show support but don’t honestly know what to say– you just want to show your concern. You are just there.
I smiled back at her, the kind of smile you give to say, ‘It’s ok. I know you are here. Thanks’.
I looked around the room, marveling at the small turn out. There were three other high school friends, four from college, three people I couldn’t place, four people I knew I’d never met and a cousin that I had met once whose name I could never remembered. And his mother, of course. With her new — well, new to me — husband. Mike’s Dad had died twelve years ago from a sudden heart attack. No warning, no expectation. He’d been an active man, playing golf, jogging, even playing raquet ball. He’d played me and I wondered if he got any exercise out of it because he’d planted his feet firmly in the middle of the court and never moved, knocking the ball around all over the place, making me run like a humming bird on speed. And then one day he was just gone. Mike returned for the funeral. He didn’t even stay for the wake — he was away on a plane. I got a breezy excuse about ‘Something on the boil I can’t leave’ and he was gone. But that was Mike. Never in one place long. Never at rest — always moving. Always watching around, checking things out, making internal calculations. He was my best and oldest friend, but did I really know him? There were frequently time where I kind of doubted that I did.
His mother had remarried four years later, and it seemed to be okay with Mike. We’d talked on a flying visit and he said he was ok with it. I was glad his mom had found companionship again. She and my mom still did a yearly trip to visit the big malls in Chicago, and still occasionally had coffee. Well, that’s what I was told anyway. Jo knew — she even went with them on occasion.
The pastor said a few words, something about ‘going to a better place.’ I almost snorted at that, but Jo gripped me harder at that moment. She knew me. She knew what I thought and what I would have expressed had we not been at a funeral. I’d have said something like, ‘No, not only is there no lights on upstairs, there is no upstairs. This is all we have. We aren’t going to a better place. We are just ending.’ Or something like that. Either way, I’d have challenged it. But this was Mike’s funeral and my kick at that particular groin would have to wait for a more appropriate time.
The funeral ended, and we walked out of the crematorium, nodding at the people we knew, and me doing some unabashed staring at the people we didn’t. One women of the four I didn’t know caught my eye, smiled at me, and I could see her turn to the people she was with, murmur something to them and then break away to come towards us.
Jo had seen her too, and stopped. The woman approached us and said, ‘Mr. Tramell? Might I bother you for a moment? You must be Jo Tramell, yes?’
Jo glanced at me and nodded.
‘You look just like your pictures. It’s so nice to finally meet Mr. and Mrs. America.’
Jo and I looked at each other again, not sure how to react to this.
‘I’m sorry, I have the better of you. I’m Madeline Walsh. I used to…work with Mike.’
I stiffened. What Mike did was never entirely revealed to me. I had some clue about it — I couldn’t not, after the youth we’d had -, but no details. Never details. None. Mike was very careful about that. He told me he was a troubleshooter for an oil company, hence all the zipping around the world he did, but we — Jo, me and his parents — knew that was bullshit. I knew what Mike did for a living, at least I was pretty sure on the broad strokes. We had planned it together, growing up. It’s what we always wanted to be.
I should back up, since I’m going down a path and into details that you have no context for. So let me change that. Here goes.
I’m Jake Tramell. The woman holding my hand is my wife, Jo. We’ve been married for 22 years, getting hitched when we were both the grand old age of 23. Which makes us, you guessed it, 45. We met in college. Mike was the year ahead of us and was my oldest friend in the world. Our parents had been friends for years, they’d even bought land together and split it and then built their houses so the backyards abutted. My dad was often away — he was an officer in the diplomatic service and he was often gone for a couple of days at a time, jetting around the world. I found out when I was older that he was actually a bagman. When you hear about the ‘diplomatic bag’ in spy novels, well, he was the guy who carried it. It sounds exotic but it’s not. Dad would drone on about how he literally got on a plane, flew somewhere, touched down, got in a car, drove to either a consulate, an embassy, or in some of the really poor and small countries, the personal residence of the ambassador, drop a bag off, pick up another one and get right back in the car, straight back to the airport and on another plane. He never looked in the bag, and he wasn’t supposed to. That was it. No spy missions, no exotic women, no shootouts or martinis. Just lots of air travel and no time to see the locations. But he made a living and he was happy and so was mom, for the most part. And the airmiles. My god, the airmiles.
As I said, Mike was a year ahead of me at college. I was studying languages with a minor in history. Mike was also doing languages and a minor in athletics. We were preparing ourselves. Oh, yes we were. No question. I’ll get into that more a little later.
So this Madeline Walsh was standing in front of us, looking us over, appraising us. Neither Jo nor myself had said anything yet, so I figured it was about time.
‘ ‘Worked’ Ms. Walsh? I wasn’t aware that Mike ‘worked’ at anything, besides getting a tan and learning about expensive hotels’. It was my attempt at levity, and frankly, it was a pretty poor effort.
She smirked. That same knowing smirk I’d seen on Mike’s face more than once, when I’d attempted a joke.
‘Oh he worked alright. I think you’d be surprised at how hard. When he worked, he put his all into it.’
‘What can we do for you, Ms. Walsh?’ asked Jo, in her clear contralto. Her accent was mid Boston, but cultured. She enunciated every word, a habit for which our kids and I teased her mercilessly. However, as she pointed out, at least one of had to sound cultured, because otherwise we’d all be mistaken for rednecks, or, even worse, Republicans.
‘I just wanted to meet you. Mike had some pictures of you and your family in his office. He called you Mr. and Mrs. America. ‘The reason for all we do’ he’d say. I can see him saying it now…’ she said, wistfully.
I was obvious to me that there was more to her the relationship with Mi
ke than mere co-worker. I re-examined Madeline Walsh — obviously just moving out of her prime, late 40’s I’d guess. Not quite 5’9, slim, blond hair that was in a bob, and obviously bleached. Bright eyes, well applied makeup. I tried to remember what I’d read about being observant and looked her over some more.
She saw me doing it and suppressed a smile.
‘Oh, you need to be less obvious Jake. I can call you Jake, can’t I? I feel like I know you. Mike talked about you guys a lot.’
I nodded — what else could you do when it’s asked like that?
‘Am I that obvious?’ I asked, wondering how she’d answer.
‘Totally. We are taught to suppress the obvious. You learn do it over time. When you get good, it’s quite subtle. You make excuses to examine something specific — ‘oh, that’s a lovely ring, can I see it?’ and when they do, you get to examine their hands. To be honest, it’s very tedious having to always act that way. It’s easier to be obvious.’
‘Should you be… you know, saying stuff like that? I thought you guys were never supposed to reveal…well, anything?’ asked Jo.
She knew what Mike had been. Or what we suspected he’d been. He’d never acknowledged it, but I knew. Hell, we’d both worked so hard to get that job. The fact that he’d never confirmed or denied it meant he was obviously involved in the security services. I didn’t know if he was NSA or CIA or something else. I just knew he did hush-hush shit, and went all over the world and sometimes had stories to tell. . I knew because it had been what we’d dreamed of.
‘Oh, I’m not involved any more. Been retired for four years now. Well, I say retired,’ she said, doing the glance to heaven that people do when they are contradicting themselves, ‘but you are never completely out I suppose. On the other hand, I don’t really want anything to do with that world any more, and being a bit blatant about it is the best way to stay out. Security risk you see. Can’t be trusted not to blab.’
She gave us a huge smile. I judged it to be genuine. It looked genuine. But then, was anything genuine with these people?
‘I do have something for you. It’s a letter. We all…we all write one. Mike actually had two. I already gave his mother the one to her. It’s intended to be sent – well, you know when. Most people will never know what happened, and I don’t think we ever will, to be honest. The letters are vetted, because they have to be. Can’t have classified stuff in there.’
She rummaged around in the huge bag she held on her arm. Jo nudged me and nodded at the bag. It was a Michael Kors. I’ve no doubt it was expensive and I’d be hearing about it later. Jo had a thing about expensive handbags. We have the largest collection of top end fakes this side of the continental divide I think, all courtesy of Mike. It had even got to the point where Jo would send him texts with images of the real bags she wanted, and Mike would find them wherever he was. We’d get a package a few weeks later with the best fake in it money could buy. Now I think about it, I wonder if any are genuine?
She pulled out a large letter envelope, the kind you normally use for internal memos. It was folded flat, but unsealed. She offered it to me and I took it and thanked her.
She glanced back at her group who were waiting patiently by a blacked out town car.
‘I’m sorry there wasn’t more representation at the funeral. They won’t allow active agents to go to these things. Too much chance if the…individual was compromised — and lets face it, if he’s dead, he more than likely was — that the funeral is being observed to see who might be an associate. Just so you know, there was an internal gathering, and there were a lot of people there. Mike touched a lot of lives inside. Hell, he saved a lot us at one point of another. He was a popular guy. And you are a thing of legend because of it. If Mike did it for you, what were you like? To be honest, we’ve all seen your file, and I’m sure you know it doesn’t make for that exciting reading. Professor of dead languages at Northwestern University, three kids, two twins, married twenty plus years, own your house, published three non-fiction books and two adventure novels, under a nom de plume. You have it all. The American Dream. You’ve worked hard and been rewarded in the American way. It’s not hard to see why Mike felt the way he did.
‘You know, he used you as his scale, to take measure of the things we had to do, and how we had to do them. He’d hold up your picture and he’d say, ‘If we do this, can I look these people in the eye and tell them, and will they approve?’ If he didn’t think you’d understand or approve, he would tell the team to ‘find another way’. That’s not to say we didn’t cross that line on occasion — we did, but sometimes there is no other way. Sometimes there is no good way at all.’
She looked off into the distance again, then pulled herself together and gave us another smile. This one didn’t reach her eyes.
‘Well, I have to run. It was nice meeting you. It’s a shame we never got our hooks into you, Mr. Jake Tramell. You’d have fit in nicely I think. Mike was right though, I think you were better off out. It certainly seems like you’ve made a life for yourself. It was nice to meet you Mrs. Tramell. I love your shoes, by the way.’
And then she was gone, back to her group, who were by now looking at watches and shifting foot to foot and all the other small things people do when they are impatient and being held up.
Jo and I looked at each other. It was like a whirlwind of knowledge had passed through us. This Madeline Walsh –if that was even her real name – knew us, knew things about us, but we knew nothing about her.
I opened my mouth to say something, thought better of it and said instead, ‘Are you as disturbed as I am that there is a file on us with those people,’ I nodded to the car, that was just pulling away. ‘On us? Who’d want to check up on us?’
Jo smiled — the first genuine one I could guarantee of the day — and said, ‘Oh I don’t know. Maybe they know about my second life. Josh always said I was Supermom. Maybe they’ve broken my secret identity.’
I smiled back, nodding. Then I thought of Mike and I stopped smiling. Jo noticed and linked arms with me, pulling me towards the car.
‘Come on you. I know its Mike’s…ending. But don’t be too maudlin. Lets go to the reception and remember him. We probably knew him better than any one except his mother. Let’s go tell some stories, drink some toasts and be glad we knew him. You know that’s how he’d want it.’
I nodded. She was right. That is what he’d want. And he’d have insisted on bringing out the Goldschläger, Mike’s drink of choice for celebrations. He made all sorts of jokes about gold plated turds, due to the gold flakes suspended in the liquid. We’d do some shots in his honor. I was already wincing. Those shots were my kryptonite. Three of them and I’d be hung over for days. But, so be it. He was my best friend. Time to raise a glass.
I sat in my easy chair, looking alternately at my glass of Jack Daniels Single Barrel and then at the envelope in my lap. It was late. I’d done a bunch of research already on my latest project — I had four interns doing a new translation of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and I was running the project and double-checking their work. Aramaic was a tough language to translate, and some of the Hebrew scrolls also had tricky passages, written in a vernacular that was hard to understand, not having the cultural context to make sense of them. There are already so many mistakes in the Bible from bad translations made in the middle ages. The reality is that the translation in many bibles from the original Hebrew/Aramaic to modern languages is similar to the awful Japanese to English translations of user manuals in the 1970s.
They are literally that bad. Imagine reciting the bible with a terrible Japanese accent and you start to get the idea.
I
wasn’t really expecting any huge change in wording or meaning, but hope springs eternal. You never know what might have been mistranslated in the past. For all we know, one of the commandments might actually be ‘Thou Shalt commit adultery’, as one of the misprints in the Victorian era had advocated. Of course, that version would have gotten very bad reviews from many people calling themselves Anonymous on certain parts of 21st century erotic literature websites.
I’d finished my work, and Jo was in bed. She’d gone up earlier as usual. When we’d had young ‘uns in the house, we had a balanced schedule– I’d work late at home, and get up late (hey, if you are the professor, you often get to set the class time), and she’d go to bed earlier, watch one of her reality shows then go to sleep and get up early to get the kids off to school.
Even when the kids were grown and gone, as the last of ours, Josh, had just done, we’d never really changed this. So here I was, it was 11:30, I had a drink — and the bottle, in case I needed more fortification — and was staring at the envelope.
I still didn’t know why I hadn’t read it yet. I mean, it was probably a last will and testament of sorts for Mike. But for some reason I was nervous. I had no idea why, but I was. I felt like this would be his last communication with me, and I guess I thought that the longer I delayed reading it, the longer Mike wouldn’t really be dead and gone. It was illogical, but it made sense of a sort to me.
I took a sip of the JD — I like the Single Barrell because it is just smoother, I prefer my hard liquor to be smooth, not sharp. Mike and I had disagreed on this mightily. Mike was all scotch single malts, with their peaty tastes, and I was all refined blends like Jameson, Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort. He used to laugh at me, and would bring me expensive bottles of Scotch when he came to visit, always with stickers on them from the duty free at one far-flung airport or other. He was always trying to ‘educate me on the finer things of life’ and I’d retort that I already had the ‘finer things in life, and she was sitting upstairs in bed, watching Sister Wives or something else equally stupefying.’ And he’d laugh and pour a shot and do a toast to Jo – in my case very definitely my better half.
I sighed, knowing that Jo would be exasperated if she were here — she’d already made it clear that she thought I was ‘on the verge of retardation’ (she had such a way with words, did my Jo) for not already opening it and reading it. She’d said that if I hadn’t read it by the weekend, she’d open it for me and read it aloud over breakfast.
That was Jo. We were married so long, we had become like two sides of the same coin. I knew her and she knew me, and we were extremely comfortable. The kind of comfort that comes from years of experience, with seeing the best and worst in each other, and dealing with it – together, accepting it -together and moving on – together. No, moving forward. Not on. That sounds like we would just give up when the going got tough, and we didn’t do that. We tried to change each other for the better when we could we could, and accept the remaining flaws when we could not.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t mightily piss me off. My god, that woman could make me angry with just a look. And she knew it, and at times, delighted in it. Oh she’d apologize for it the next day — and mean it too — but sometimes she just couldn’t help herself. She could be moody, she would constantly interrupt me, and she just didn’t take seriously some things that needed to be taken seriously. In other words, Jo was a female, the archetype of the species.
But then I wasn’t perfect either. I was sloppy and lazy around the house in terms of doing chores. I was good at fixing things and getting jobs done, but when it came to the every day tasks, I was just lazy. I’d let them mount up — not loading the dishwasher till I ran out of cups or plates, for example. It was enough to drive her up the wall. I was bad about tracking money and expenditure and I was often more a friend to the kids than the parent I should have been. Jo would take the kids to task and I’d be behind her making mouth movements with my hands and making the kids laugh and totally devaluing the points she was making. It was immature. In other words, I was a male.
Mckenna
- 19.08.2022
- 37
- 0
